One of the hazards of having built up a reputation as a cerebral actor-cum-producer — more interested in perfecting one’s craft and being associated with original, well-scripted projects than in the Bollywood rat race — is that you’re occasionally held to those standards.
Aamir Khan probably knows this if he’s looked at some of the online reactions to his new film Ghajini, a remake of the Tamil movie of the same name, which in turn borrowed its basic premise from Christopher Nolan’s acclaimed Memento.
In the first place, Khan’s position as a Serious Artiste is slightly overstated — he is thought of in these terms only in the context of mainstream Hindi cinema, and when the reference points are other Bollywood superstars like Shah Rukh and Salman (already, it can be argued that the younger, more low-profile Abhay Deol has an equally noteworthy résumé over the past three years). But his commitment to quality can’t be faulted, and movies like Rang de Basanti and Taare Zameen Par have shown that it’s possible for an intelligently written film to be an audience-pleaser too. Which is why the potboiler Ghajini is now being judged by higher yardsticks than the ones usually applied to masala movies.
In an insightful review on his blog Blogical Conclusion (https://bsmedia.business-standard.comtinyurl.com/9e7eum), Baradwaj Rangan says: “The problem with Ghajini is that it’s not content being a big, trashy B-movie (or perhaps a more truthful way of putting it would be that those of us who expect consistently great things from Aamir Khan are unable to look at it as just a big, trashy B-movie).” Blogger thedeskjockey writes on Desicritics (http://desicritics.org/) that this doesn’t feel like an Aamir Khan film. “The finesse and class associated with his previous movies is not there. It feels more like a huge ego trip for the actor where he matches the other Khans in body and the Deols in brute force.” Other voices likewise clamour that they feel let down.
But were the high expectations justified in the first place? Long before Ghajini was released, word had spread that it was a remake, that too of a film which was “inspired”. A member of a Facebook group titled “Why watch Ghajini when you can watch Memento?” (http://tinyurl.com/ a7zpu6) says “Even the Tamil version was an utterly dumbed-down version of Nolan’s classic.” (Another member inadvertently gives us a part explanation for why the new Ghajini will be a hit regardless: “I would still want to see how ‘good’ or bad a copy it is.”)
A commenter on Rangan’s blog raises another sensitive topic. “I’m puzzled by people expecting ‘perfectionism’ from AK only to be disappointed when he does something like Ghajini,” she says, “because, to me, the bulk of his supposedly great films have been typical Bollywood movies with an inflated sense of self-importance.” For some indeterminate reason, another commenter then begins a long rant about how Aamir’s achievements pale in comparison to Kamal Hasan’s. Meanwhile, in a galaxy far, far away, denizens of Rediff.com (http://tinyurl.com/93trsw) are squabbling about how Aamir’s latest compares with Shah Rukh’s latest (the tepid Rab ne Bana Di Jodi), and who is Bollywood's “real Badshah”.
In a country of 1.3 billion people, any film will necessarily have armies of passionate defenders. Thus a commenter named ideaunique sagely points out that “millions of people are liking the movie very much (Box Office nos are saying it all) — so what does that mean? Don’t those millions don’t know what is good?” Eventually, even an icon for serious cinema must be vindicated by the cash counters.